More bad drought news: Drought makes hotter temperatures more likely

Which sounds best: DroughtMill? GristDrought? DroughtDrought? We’re just giving up and changing this site into your all-drought, all-the-time news source.

Our David Roberts anchors the 6 p.m. newscast.

Climate Central has some news that makes the bad news about the drought even worse: Droughts increase the likelihood of hot weather, according to new research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s a feedback loop — heat leads to droughts, droughts worsen heat.

This occurs because of feedbacks between the ground and the air: as the soil and vegetation dry, more of the sun’s energy is able to go into heating the air directly, rather than going into evaporating moisture from plants and the soil.

With drought conditions intensifying during mid-summer, the study suggests that the U.S. may be in for particularly brutal Dog Days of August.

Climate Central asked one of the researchers how much hotter we might expect the summer to be. Her response:

“Predicting the exact number of hot days would be difficult,” [Brigitte] Mueller said, “because dry conditions can lead to both a high number of hot days or a low number of hot days … However, the prediction could include a probability for a high number of hot days.”

Oh, climate scientists and the old “it’s almost certainly going to get hotter but maybe not that much or maybe a shitload but we can’t exactly pin it down” routine. Don’t they realize we have 24 hours of drought news to fill?

Up next on DroughtDrought, three guys who don’t know anything about the weather debate the weather until one of them cries.